Bedtime Bandit Strikes Again

So, I went upstairs at 7:15 this morning to wake up Teo for camp. He was all snuggled in under his quilt, with both hands in prayer position under his face nestled into the pillow, and he looked like an angel. For exactly ten seconds. Until I rubbed him on the back to wake him, and he stretched and rolled over and I saw...big black spots everywhere. He had black around his right eye like a shiner, huge spots of black on his pajamas and sheets, and lines of it on both hands. I sat there stunned for maybe another ten seconds until I saw the uncapped, black pen under next to his hip. The bedtime bandit had struck again.

Teo has always been a night owl, even when he was only three months old. Back then he'd take a little nap around 7:30 when we put Luke to bed, only to wake up a couple of hours later and want to party all night. Even when he still slept in the crib I would often go up there to check on him late at night and find that he'd managed to drag a book from wherever I'd left it into his crib and had ripped it to pieces. When his crib wasn't close enough to a bureau or bookcase to get anything, he'd slam dance it across the room. I literally had to put sneakers on the casters of the crib when he slept in it so he couldn't drive it across town.



When we moved him into a big boy bed, many books lost their lives. As a result, it hasn't really been a one-way trip. In fact, with Teo only three months away from his fourth birthday, I still have a portacrib set up in the corner of the boys' room that I pull out and make him sleep in when I discover him acting the part of the midnight marauder. Luckily, he hasn't figured out that he could easily climb out of the thing, and I hope that he won't at least until he stops destroying things after lights out.

So apparently after I left last night he took a pen that I had in his nightstand (so I could add the titles of the books we read to both boys' summer reading lists for school) and decided to write all over his hands and arms. He was giving himself tattoos. When he finally dropped off to sleep the pen was still in the bed with him and appears to have spent the rest of the night seeping into the cotton sheets, his cotton pajamas, and the skin under his pajamas. I had checked on the boys at about 10:30, but didn't see the evidence in the dark. I tried taking it off his skin with rubbing alcohol, but it was going to take way too much scrubbing with alcohol to get it all off, not to mention I couldn't use alcohol near his eye, and I really didn't want to use alcohol because he's been kind of rashy already. So I threw him in a bath and went at the stains with my exfoliating glove, which both boys treat as if it's a medieval torture device, so of course he wasn't thrilled. I had lotioned him up really well before bed, though, which made it a little better. Getting all the ink off his hands, though, just wasn't possible, and a really dark, big spot on his chest wouldn't all come off either. I just had to do my best and hope Tina can get some more off tonight.

The things that seem like a good idea to Teo late at night really scare me for his future. Luke said to me, "I never did anything like that when I was his age..." and I had to agree that in hindsight Luke was a perfect child.

So...anyone know how to get ink out of sheets?